Hi,

Hope some of you good gamers can help a dad trying to get his 12-year old boy a laptop that can play Oblivion.

The system reqs on the Oblivion site: ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card.

I'm trying to buy my boy a laptop w/ a budget in the $500-range, but those laptops don't have that kind of
video/graphics cards.

My question is, MUST a pc have such good video cards to play Oblivion? Or will a lower-end pc still work decently?

Most of the laptops I've checked have video cards like ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 - will that work?

Hope someone can help, and thank you in advance.

Sincerely,
Christian

For around $500, you're not going to get much better than integrated graphic chipset like the Radeon 4250...this isn't a real card. It'll run this game on low settings.

If you want a game-playing laptop that inexpensively, you have to buy USED. The HD 4250 is not a graphics card at all, same as nothing that Intel offers for video is not a CARD. They are only pieces of a larger chip called a chipset chip. You can buy a new desktop for that kind of money that will work, but not a laptop. To play games, even as old as this one, you need more than the cheapest of laptops to do it, unless you will settle for jerky animation, grainy images, and coarse screen resolutions.

You cannot purchase the old video cards that were used as either minimums or "recommended" for this game when it was new. At least, not new cards. However, there are inexpensive new business graphics cards that aren't necessarily good enough for new games like Mass Effect 2, but in the years since this game was new, those have caught up with the minimums of that day, and even in some cases, with the recommended level cards back then.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=630&card2=301

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150492

Those are first, a comparison of the old minimum Radeon, and a current lower level card to each other, and second, a place to purchase the low level card for $50, if you bought a $400 desktop that had no video card, but did have the add-on slot to put one into.

Gorath

Thank you very much, my elder brother. That is very helpful.

Christian

When the same assembly processes were use for laptops as for desktops, just with smaller, lighter (and slower, mostly) internal components, they cost at least twice as much to manufacture as the equivalent desktop type PCs. In those days, desktops (branded, anyway) were mostly about $2000, and there really just weren't any laptops able to match performance at any price, but at almost $4000, you got fairly close.

A "cheap" laptop was still more expensive than an average branded desktop PC. The number of PCs being sold shot way up, however, and the average desktop's price began dropping, but not the laptops. There just wasn't much of any way to sell those cheaper when they were made the old way. However, by dispensing with many of the features offered by desktops, using an entirely different assembly procedure, it became possible to put newer laptops on the shelves at prices closer to those of desktops.

The least expensive are cheap in every way that the word is defined, however. All of them, for all practical purposes are now assembled with no "insides" still accessible, except the main memory, and the storage drive systems. The video they have cannot be changed. The CPU they have cannot be changed. They are chemically bonded, solidly welded into a monobloc structure. Because they are now comparatively less costly, desktops are only being bought by businesses. Everyone else buys laptops, unless they play a lot of games.

Game playing laptops still exist, but despite the new assembly procedures, will still cost $1600 to $2500 each, while game playing desktops for current games cost half of that.


Gorath

Thanks again, this is great. So what do young kids do that can't afford that sort of stuff? Don't play? Play w/ poor resolution? Or simply wait till they can afford the real deal?

Christian

Most of them get one of the consoles (ie. xbox 360, PS3) -- which is why the PC gaming market is in the shape it is with most games being poor ports from games designed for the consoles. If on a tight budget then a desktop unit instead of a laptop is usually the best option -- for the $500 budget you can get much better performance from a desktop - plus with a desktop you can buy what you can afford now and upgrade some parts later as you get more funds where laptops are pretty much set once you buy them and you have to buy a new one to increase performance later.

Can't agree with that. Gaming caliber notebooks/laptops, even high-end ones, can be found for much less than that. It's all about how and where you shop. Search around and you will find:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i7+Processor+/+17.3%22+Display+/+6GB+Memory+/+640GB+Hard+Drive+-+Black/1257894.p?id=1218243761956&skuId=1257894

Take you pick here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=32&Description=&Type=&N=100006740&IsNodeId=1&srchInDesc=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&OEMMark=0&PropertyCodeValue=http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1146087-help-a-dad-and-his-boy-w-graphic-cards/402%3A57506&PropertyCodeValue=402%3A54305&PropertyCodeValue=402%3A53929&PropertyCodeValue=402%3A48515&PropertyCodeValue=402%3A72227&PropertyCodeValue=402%3A75109

Thanks. I'm so glad I posed this question in this forum. You guys are great!

Does it have to be a laptop? If you want to play Oblivion for <$500 why not get the Xbox version? You don't have to worry about your boy using the creepy advlt themed mods, the game will rarely if ever crash and I think you'll save at least $200. True the game is better on a pc, but that implies that you 've got more than a $500 laptop. If you want to play mods, the more mods you run the worse the game runs. These days I'm sure the Oblivion Goty disk for Xbox is pretty solid.

edit: I can't believe I advocated someone get the console version. but my argument stands